the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the editors of The Journal of Interdisciplinary History

Political Participation and the Social Mobilization Hypothesis: Chile, Mexico, Venezuela, and Cuba, 1800-1825 Author(s): Jorge I. Dominguez Source: The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Autumn, 1974), pp. 237-266 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/202508 . Accessed: 12/06/2011 19:27
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Jorge I. Dominguez

Political Participation and the Social Mobilization Hypothesis: Chile, Mexico, Venezuela, and Cuba, 1800-1825
POLITICAL PARTICIPATION AND THE SOCIAL MOBILIZATION HYPOTH-

ESIS

summarize Thesearenot mutually observable differences. traditional, are at the ends of a continuum. exclusive; they poles Peopleparticipate in politics,in the finalanalysis, because theychooseto do so. However, modern political participants typically have internal,autonomous sources for suchparticipation. psychological They canturnthemselves on oroffpolitically withoutdepending external to themselves. on agents out of their continuously capableof becomingpoliticalparticipants own resources. on Traditional politicalparticipants, the other hand, to turn them or organizations) rely more on external agents(leaders on politically.Politically, they are non-autonomous. When the neithercontinuously of involvedin politics,nor continuously capable becominginvolvedout of theirown resources. A seconddimension rests of differences in politicalparticipation on the experience of modernization. Modernpoliticalparticipation and with historical commitments pointsto a break,total or partial, of Traditional patterns pastpoliticalparticipation. politicalparticipain a basiccontextof continuity with tion, on the otherhand,operates thepast.Evenwhentraditional often they political participants protest, seek to restorepre-existing conditions ratherthanclaimnew rights; they show low levelsof politicalorganization (suchas food riotsand
Jorge I. Dominguez is Assistant Professor of Government at Harvard University and the author of several articles on Latin America. The author is grateful to the anonymous critic of the JIH and to the participants of the Conference on Methodological Issues in Latin American Social Science (1973), co-sponsored by the Harvard Center for International Affairs and the M.I.T. Center for International Studies, for comments on an earlier draft. I David Easton, "An Approach to the Analysis of Political Systems," World Politics, IX (I957), 383, 387-395.

many kinds of political participation,two ideal types, modern and

of valuesin a societythrough Thoughthereare political participation.'

Men and women have often sought to affect the allocation

Although they may not be politicalparticipants continuously,they are

external pressurescease, the political participationceases. They are

238 | JORGE I. DOMINGUEZ

peasantrevolts), ratherthan more complex forms (such as labor These two dimensions-theoriginalsourceof participation and its historicalcontext-are summarized by the social mobilization as "the processin hypothesis.Deutsch defined social mobilization which major clustersof old social, economic and psychological for are erodedor brokenand peoplebecomeavailable commitments of socialization new patterns and behavior." Many scholars, despite man from his accustomed mechanismwhich dislodgestraditional has a variety of empirically commitments observable components which are highly and positively correlateddiachronically and/or Quantitativeindicators for social mobilization cross-nationally. include schoolenrollment income,mediaexposure, literacy, percapita, and urbanization, non-agricultural mobility, employment, occupational The dependent variable is political As the amongothers. participation. indicators of socialmobilization the probability of a break increase, with previouspatterns and the launching of a new patternis quite in the scope and domainof politicalparticipation high. An increase
is likely to follow an increase in social mobilization: More people participatein politics and are affected by politics; more issues are differentpurposesand methods, have supportedthis hypothesis.2The strikesor political parties).

thought to be within the politicalrealm.Thus, socialmobilization increases theprobability of a new kindof political different participation frompastparticipation.3 Moststudies of the socialmobilization definepolitical hypothesis as the or what we to psychological participation capacity participate, have calledthe internal, autonomous abilityto turnoneselfon or off It has a decisive variables politically. probably impacton intervening suchas personalities, which arethe moreproxibeliefs,andattitudes, matecauses of political Mostof thesestudies alsoconcur participation.
Karl W. Deutsch, "Social Mobilization and Political Development," American Political ScienceReview, LV (1961), 494; Daniel Lerner, The Passing of TraditionalSociety (New York, 1964), 46; Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics (Garden City, N.Y., 1963), 183-229; Robert Lane, Political Life (New York, 1965), 45-79; Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture (Boston, 1965), I2-I8, 315-336. Jose L. Reyna, An Empirical Analysis of Political Mobilization: The Case of Mexico (Ithaca, 1971), 35-50, provides a broad summary of empirical findings on social mobilization as it related to political participation; most, but not all, of the findings support the hypothesis. For a propositional inventory on the hypothesis, see Lester W. Milbrath, PoliticalParticipation:How and Why Do People Get Involved in Politics? (Chicago,
2

1965), I6-17,

III-I30.

3 Deutsch, "Social Mobilization," 495-496, 498-500.

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to participate is "new"-a break with thatthispsychological capacity and behaviors.4 historical orientations, feelings, Recent studieshave examinedmore preciselythe admittedly in socialmobilization. One entangled highly relatedset of variables can drawthreeprincipal conclusions aboutthe stateof thisvenerable arestillvalid:Education, features Itsessential income,and hypothesis.s in in effect have a significant propelling occupation, particular, people
into sustainedpolitical participation.These factorsalso "go together."
Political participation, of the sort affected by social mobilization, is still seen as the capacityto affect politics. Urbanization is now thought not to have an independent impact on political participation (even though it correlates highly with variables that do). There is little reason to assume an automatic politicizing or radicalizing bias either to the process of migration to the city, or to the urban environment itself. The political behavior of migrants flows less from assumed widespread anomie and frustration and more from the attitudes and patterns of behavior which migrants bring with them from the countryside and from the active process of political socialization to which they are exposed in the cities. In addition, the argument that the urban poor are radical is misleading. The critical issue is to specify the process of politicization, that is, just how the urban poor may be inducted into politics. There is a renewed stress on the importance and independent impact of organizational involvement and political mobilization, even perhaps in the absence of much social mobilization, on the promotion of political activity. There may be organization-based political participation (in factories, unions, and parties) which is different from the behavior predicted by the social mobilization hypothesis. Thus, one observes the involvement of relatively non-autonomous individuals in politics as a result of pressures external to themselves. These men and women are "turned on" politically by leaders and organizations. Once this external mobilization declines or ceases, political activity declines or ceases, given the relative absence of effective social mobilization.
4 Lerner, Traditional Society, 50; Almond and Verba, Civic Culture, 206; Deutsch, "Social Mobilization," 494; Milbrath, Political Participation, 51, 53-54, 56-57, 6i, 63, 64, 68, 77, 79-80. 5 Norman H. Nie, G. Bingham Powel, Jr., and Kenneth Prewitt, "Social Structure and Developmental Relationships, Part I," American Political Science Review, LXIII (1969), 365, 370, 374; ibid., Part II, 825-828; Alex Inkeles, "Participant Citizenship in Six Developing Countries," ibid., 1122-1123, 1139-1141; Joan M. Nelson, Migrants, Urban Poverty, and Instability in Developing Nations (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), 25-26,

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I JORGE I. DOMINGUEZ

These considerationsthus far assume a significant amount of social mobilization. The researchquestionshave been concerned with the effectof the speedof socialmobilizationand the mix between exterHowever, two additional nally and internallymotivated participation. be at the core of the hypothesis but at the aimed not objectionsmay of the socialmobilization of its The structure applicability. range logical that there are circumstances indicates where it does not hypothesis apply. In order to argue that "old" commitments can be eroded or broken,it is necessaryto envision a time when the "old" commitments were prevalent.The hypothesiscannot be used to explain all political at all times, but only the specialmodern kind: the internal, participation autonomous capacity of an individual to engage in sustainedpolitical
participation.

Second, the social mobilization hypothesis emphasizes a mass phenomenon. The utility of the hypothesishas been its stresson mass sectorswhich may have change beyond the elite,6or beyond particular undergone modernization.There has been an educated elite in many pre-modernpoliticalsystems.The mere presenceof such an elite, or of isolated pockets of modernization, is insufficient evidence of the existenceof social mobilization.The hypothesisrequireslarge numbers of sociallymobilizedpeople who are turningto new patternsof organization and behavior.
THE WARS OF INDEPENDENCE PERIOD IN SPANISH AMERICA

Dur-

ing the first quarterof the nineteenth century, the Spanishempire in

66-67. See also idem, "The Urban Poor: Disruption or Political Integration in Third World Cities," WorldPolitics,XXII (1970), 393-414; Wayne A. Cornelius,Jr., " Urbanization as an Agent in Latin American Political Instability: The Case of Mexico," American Political Science Review, LXIII (1969), 854-857; idem, "The Political Sociology of Cityward Migration in Latin America: Toward Empirical Theory," in Francine F. Rabinowitz and Felicity M. Trueblood (eds.), Latin American Urban Research (Beverly Hills, I97I), I, 95, 147; Bradley M. Richardson, "Urbanization and Political Participation: The Case of Japan," American Political Science Review, LXVII (I973), 433-452; Gerald W. Johnson, "Political Correlatives of Voter Participation: A Deviant Case " Analysis, ibid., LXV (197I), 768-776; Samuel P. Huntington andJorge I. Dominguez, "Political Development," in Fred Greenstein and Nelson Polsby (eds.), The Handbook of Political Science, (Reading, Mass., forthcoming), Part IV; Samuel P. Huntington and Joan Nelson, "Socio-Economic Change and Political Participation," (Cambridge, Mass., 1973), mimeo; Sidney Verba and Norman H. Nie, Participationin America (New
York, 1972).

Deutsch, "Social Mobilization," 497-498.

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mainland America collapsed.7Research on this period has typically emphasizedagglomerativeor case studies.The latterpresenta detailed examinationof the reasonswhy a given colony became independent. Agglomerative studiespresent a general discussion,at a much higher level of aggregation, concerning the reasons for the collapse of the empire as a whole. Comparativestudies,emphasizingthe detailedcomparisonof differentmodes of political behavior in a number of colonies, have been rare. Most of the studiesof the periodareheavily "loaded."Becausethey focus only on colonieswhich becameindependent,they fail to consider political behavior in loyal colonies. Some of the favorite hypotheses to explainthe wars of independencemust be looked at skepticallyonce one is committed to the explanationof political behavior during this period, ratherthan to the explanationof the coming of independence in those countrieswhich in fact became independent.Among possible decisive "causes"of independence,one finds the Napoleonic invasion of Spain, the thirst for unfettered foreign trade, the impact of the Enlightenmentor, more specifically,of the ideas and examples of the North Americanand Frenchrevolutions,the conflictbetween Spanishborn and American-bornelites, etc. Yet, all of these alleged "causes" existed in a colony which did not revolt (Cuba), often to a more heightened degree than in the colonies which did. Most of the studies of the period make relatively little use of contemporary social science hypotheses which have been useful to explain certainforms of political behavior acrosstime and space. The of suchhypothesesto the periodof the wars of independence application would have three conceivable outcomes. The first is that the hypotheses would explain political behavior during the period, in an "unloaded" and comparativefashion, more efficiently than has been done so far. In this case, historiansmay learn from political scientists. The second is that the hypotheseswould prove utterly irrelevantto the explanation of political behavior during the period. In this case, political scientistsmay learn from historians,and be led to modify generalizationsabout political behavior which are based mostly on analysesof Europeanand North American polities. The third is that the hypotheses may provide useful contributing explanationsto one
7 Jorge I. Dominguez, "Social Mobilization, Traditional Political Participation and Government Response in Eearly Nineteenth Century Spanish America," unpub. Ph. D. diss. (Harvard University, 1972), discusses the general topic.

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Political demobilization or departicipationimmediately followed the wars, yielding little net social change. This essay will ask whether the social mobilization hypothesis can contribute to the explanation of political participationand departicipation during and after the wars of The social mobilization independenceperiod. hypothesis was chosen for two reasons.It has proved useful in the study of political participation comparativelyand diachronically.And the referencesof historians to the impact of the Enlightenment,to the clamoringfor lessrestrictions on the evolving economic growth in the cities and towns, etc., suggest that the hypothesismay apply. In contrastto the early "black legend" views about Spanish uninterest in education, "revisionist"historians have pointed to a richer colonial educationalheritage. The study was begun with the expectation that the social mobilization hypothesis would be a more efficient explanation of comparative political behavior-in secessionist and loyal colonies-than had been available heretofore. In this essay we shall focus primarily on the independent variable(socialmobilization)and its components(literacy,urbanization, media exposure, etc.). If social mobilization is at a relatively high level, then subsequent researchtrying to specify the linkage between the independent and dependent variableswould be warranted.But such a finding would make it more difficult to explain the political departicipationat the conclusion of the wars: If the probability of autonomous political participationwas high, why was there such an apparent return to preindependencepatternsof behavior in the mid-nineteenthcentury? On the other hand, if social mobilizationwas at a relativelylow level, then subsequent research to link the independent and dependent variablesmay not be warranted. Other independentvariableswould need to be explored. But a negative finding would also make it easier to explain the political departicipationat the conclusion of the wars. One would, then, expect that political participationduring the wars would have been mostly of the traditionalsort. In the light of the previous discussionabout the social mobilization hypothesis-which applies primarily to modern, autonomous political participation-we would clearly have establisheda point in time where the hypothesis cannot explain large-scalecollective participation.

and part of the periodbut not another.In this case,both historians scientists political may profit. One of the mechanisms of the empire leadingto the breakdown was a burstin politicalparticipation the during periodof the wars.

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In a peculiar way, this essay does not settle the research problem by explaining political behavior during the wars of independence period. Either conclusion requires further research. The link with the dependent variable is not established here. But this essay is a necessary step in a path of reasoning about political participation during the period under scrutiny, and about the political departicipation which immediately followed. If neither conclusion is sufficient, either is necessary to understand at least half of the problem. In short, the purpose of this essay is the specification of a complex independent variable which has proved useful in comparative political research, and for whose applicability to this period there was some a priorijustification. The independent variable is located within a hypothesis which allows us to discontinue further research with it unless the findings meet welldefined criteria as discussed further in the conclusions. The rest of this essay presents social mobilization data from four Spanish colonies. The unit of analysis is not the agglomerated Spanish empire, but four of its subunits. The colonies were chosen to meet six criteria: I) at least one viceroyalty in addition to several more peripheral colonies; 2) at least one colony which failed to have a large-scale revolt for independence, while the others were having such revolts; 3) colonies with different kinds of agricultural, mining, and industrial production; 4) representation of the different major population groups -Indians, Negroes, American whites, and Spaniards; 5) colonies with different degrees of direct involvement with countries other than Spain; 6) at least one successor state which was able to re-establish institutionalized government fairly soon after independence. Spanish colonial officials have not been eager contributors to this research. The nature of the evidence is fragmentary. Yet, a general picture of the level of social mobilization in the late Spanish colonial empire emerges. The purpose of the statistical exercise is primarily to establish orders of magnitude. One seeks, therefore, to deal with an ordinal scale. Although the data have the appearance of an interval scale, they are not sufficiently reliable to claim an interval scale. However, the ordinal scale which is attained does have upper and lower interval limits.
EDUCATION AND LITERACY

Cuba The first full educational census available for Cuba was conducted by the Royal Patriotic Society in 1836. It found that I4.5

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percentof the white malesand 2.3 percentof the free blackmales,

aged 5-I5, were in schools. The respective statistics for women,
considering only those between ages IO-I2, were 7.3 percent and

1.6 percent. In short, 9.I percent of all of the free children considered to be school age were attending school in 1836. Another source sets a maximum proportion of free students in school in that year at 13.2 percent. There are no direct statisticson the education of slave children. In order to estimate,we will assumethat the proportion of school-age slaves in schools was no more than 2 percent in I836-the same proportionas found in the free blackpopulation.However, the proportion of childrenwas much higher in the free than in the slave population: Slaveowners did not want to support an unproductive child.
The proportion of persons in the 1827 census under age I5 was 36.0

percent for the free population, but only 17.8 percent for the slave in age structure population.Within the free population, the differences among whites, blacks, and mulattoes, or between men and women, were relatively small. We can estimate the school-age slave population for 1836 by extrapolation. First, we extrapolate for the free white population in
1836 (520,000 free persons) from the 1826 and 1841 censuses; of

those, 98,900 or I9 percentare known to have been of school age from the 1836 census, and 8,946 were enrolled (bear in mind the peculiar definition used where the school age for men was years 5-I5 and for
women, 10-I2). The same method is used to estimate the slave population for 1836 at 386,000. Given the comparative age structure for free

andslavepersonsin 1827,the estimateof the free, school-agepopulation for 1836, and the assumptionthat the conditions of 1827 are roughly applicableto those of 1836, then the slave school-age population in
1836 can be estimated at 9.4 percent of the slave population, or 36,284.

Applying the rate of education of free black children to slave children,we have a probablemaximum of 726 slave childrenreceiving some education.Then the total numberof childrenreceiving education in 1836 would be 9,672 out of a combined free and slave school-age
population of I35,I84
(14.9

percent of the total population). Thus,

approximately 7.2 percent of the total school-age population was

enrolled in 1836. The 1817 national census reported 2,793 students enrolled in

Cuban schools. Assuming that they were all free, it appearsthat there was a significantjump during the I820S in educational enrollment.

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Indeed,for the provinceof Havana(which had over half of the of the islandat the time),the enrollment of white students population
jumped 279 percent from 1816 to 1836, and the enrollment of free

of black students jumped 204 percent.Takingthe 1817 population

growth from 1817 to our 1836 estimate was 63.8 percent. In short,

the rate of total populationgrowth), then the rate of population but Cubaneducation grew aboutfour timesfasterthanpopulation; thisgrowth took place during the I820S, not before, and it reacheda level whichwas stillrather low in 1836. Because we havecountsof the numberof freechildren receiving in I836 andin 1817,andan estimate of the number of someeducation some education in 1836, slavechildren who may havebeenreceiving ceteris the maximumnumberof slave childrenreceivingan paribus in 1817 is estimatedat 227. Thus the probable education numberof

Cuba at 553,ooo (a low estimate which consequently may overstate

that no significant 1817(on the assumption changesin age structure a this free took place), and slave, school-agepopulationof yields 81,997for 1817.Thus approximately 3.7 percentof the school-age in thatyear.8 children were beingeducated It is difficult for Cubafor most of to obtainharddataon literacy thenineteenth until since the first modern census wasnot taken century, literate thosefew who knew how to read,but not how to (including This to otherLatinAmerican for countries was write).9 high relative the turnof the century.That censuswas takenfollowingmore than threeyearsof savage of significant war,but alsofollowingthe decades economicdevelopment of the earlier nineteenth century.The period of I8IO-25, on theotherhand,wasthebeginning of a Cuban economic much The which would later. expansion peak significant push in that not more than Io-I2 percentof adultCubans would have been
8 The sources of the computations are Cuban Economic Research Project, A Study on Cuba (Coral Gables, Fla., I965), I7, for the 1836 school census; II, I6, for population and other educational data; additional data for 1816-I817 and 1836 are in Diego Gonzalez, "Desarrollo educativo," in Ramiro Guerra y Sanchez et al. (eds.), Historia de la nacidn cubana(La Habana, I952), III, 385-387. See also Julio J. Le Riverend Brusone, "Historia economica," ibid., 195; Jose M. Perez Cabrera, "Movimiento de poblaci6n," ibid., 344-348. 9 Cuban Economic Research Project, Cuba, 22.

children receiving some education in 1818 was 3,020. Applying the statistic derived from 1836 to obtain the school-age population in

1899. At that time, 44.6 percent of the population over age Io was

school enrollmentcame only duringthe i820s. It would seem,however,

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literatebefore 1820, that is, before the push and when not more than

of the age-eligible students were in school. 4 percent The qualitative data of a Cuban educational pointto thebeginning the when education systemduring eighteenth began century primary in manycitiesandtownsof the interior of the country:Remediosin
1712, Santiago in 1754, Matanzas in 1771, and Camagiiey in 1785. For

higher education, there are three significant events during the century. In 1722, the Bishop of Havana established a seminary, primarily for the training of clergymen, but also open to other students. It had the usual provisions against non-white admission. In 1728, the University of Havana, authorized by the Pope and the King, began functioning under the supervision of the Dominican Order. In 1773, another seminary was established (San Carlos) under the educational policies of King Charles III. Although it had the usual seminary curriculum, it paid particular attention to new developments in mathematics, physics, and other scientific subjects.I0 The Cuban data on school enrollment and literacy suggest four conclusions. One, there was a generally low level of education and literacy in I817. This has been estimated quantitatively. The quantitative data suggest that mass educational institutions began to appear on a national scale during the second half of the eighteenth century. The fact that educational growth was a late colonial experience supports the low quantitative estimate. Two, educational trends appeared to move upward at an exponential rate. There was a significant expansion of the narrowly based educational system during the I82os. Three, elite educational institutions seemed to receive at least as much, if not more, attention than mass educational institutions. And four, education was, on the whole, limited to whites. The whites also benefited more from the educational growth of the I820S, which led to an increase of black-white inequality. The quantitatively estimated unequal educational opportunities by race were legally enforced by educational regulations. Venezuela The Venezuelan census of 1846 established the popula-

tion of the country at 1,273,155; of those, 128,785 had the right to vote;

and of these, 39,002 were able to read and write. Available data on age structure for the city of Caracas in 1822 indicate that 40 percent of the people of that city were over age 20. (For the balance of this discussion
IO Juan J. Remos, "La cultura," in Guerra y Sainchez et al., Historia, II, 302-304.

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we will generalize from the Caracas age structure of 1822 to the whole of Venezuela in the absence of better data.) Therefore, the literate population of Venezuela over age 20 was 7.6 percent in 1846. Moreover, only 3.5 percent of children aged 5-I5 were enrolled in school in the I846-47 academic year. Between 18Io and 1846, Venezuela lived through both a savage war and the years of reconstruction under the Presidency of General Jose A. Paez. The character of its war of independence was such that the literate population was killed or emigrated to a significant extent. Notwithstanding the possibility that the literacy rate may have recovered a bit from 1830 to 1846, on balance we will advance the hypothesis of educational decay from the late colonial period into the republican nineteenth century. We argue for a higher literacy rate for 181o and will estimate that the number of literate persons over age 20 was no less in I8Io than it was in 1846. In addition, the population loss of Venezuela during the wars of independence has been estimated as about one-third of the population in 1822. We will, therefore, make an upward adjustment for 18o1 of the number of literate persons by the same factor of one-third, which puts the number of literates of age 20 or more in I8io at about 52,000. On the other hand, the Caracas age structure of I822 probably understates the number of Venezuelan adults in I8Io. The 1822 age structure shows the population concentrated below 15 years and over 35clearly the effect of war. We will, therefore, set the adult (age I5 or more) share of the Venezuelan population in 1810 at 60 percent. This was approximately the Cuban share for the same age groups in the free population in I826-without war. Because the slave share of the Venezuelan population was only about one-third that of Cuba, it is best to consider the age structure of Cuba's free population only. To reconcile the two sets of data, we will estimate that the number of literates between ages I5 and 20 in 181o was about 8,000; this is about the same as the national adult literacy rate. In sum, Venezuela's population age I5 or more in I810 is estimated at approximately 540,000; the literates among these number approximately 60,000. Therefore, II.I percent of the adult population was literate in I8Io.11
ii de The sources of the computations are Jose Gil Fortoul, Historiaconstitucional
Venezuela (Caracas, 1954), II, 277, 311, for the 1846 census; Federico Brito Figueroa, Historia economicay social de Venezuela (Caracas, 1966), i6o, 259, for total population; Angel Grisanti, La instruccionpublica en Venezuela (Barcelona, 1933), 133, for school enrollment data.

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The hypothesis of a "high" literacy rate for Venezuela in I8Io (relative to 1846) can be supportedfrom qualitativedata for the late colonial period. The Venezuelaneducationalsystem took shape in the period between 1700 and I8Io-roughly the century of imperial Bourbon rule. The Jesuit Order began to set up schools in Caracas and Maracaibo in I73I. Other groups followed suit, especially in
Caracas. Specialized education also received some support in Caracas:

In 1768 a school for girls was established,and, in 1772, a school was endowed for the education of twenty poor students.By 1775, moreover, there were reportsof some elementaryschools even in at least six small towns of the interior, and more solid elementary schools in the cities of Barquisimeto,El Tocuyo, and Barinas. Secondary schools were reported in the towns and cities of Cumana, Coro, and El Tocuyo. The city of Merida received a seminary in 1790 which, by 1795, was teaching university courses. In

Caracas,the University was establishedin 1725 with the traditional disciplinesand expanded to include the teaching of medicine, mathematics, physics, and non-Aristotelian philosophy after I760. In 1782,

King CharlesIIImade a specificroyal policy to persuadeparentsto send their children to school (although compulsory education would still be far away). In short, it is arguablethat there was a significant and broad-based growth of the Venezuelan educational system during the eighteenth century, and that this complex of primary, secondary, and university education could have produced the estimated I8Io
literacy level.12

The main qualification to this educational expansion was its ethnic differentiation.As in Cuba, education was primarily limited to the white segment of the population.As late as 1794, Sim6n Rodriguez, a prominentintellectual,observedthat mulattoand blackchildren "have no one to instructthem; they cannot attendthe schools of white children; poverty forces them to work from their earliestyears and
they acquire a practice but no technical knowledge .. ." Evidence of

schools open to blacks is quite meager. There are three such schools known between 1788 and 800oo-none of them establishedin Caracas,
but in other smaller towns. One of these was for black children only,

one was racially integrated, and the third accepted children of both
12 Caracciolo Parra Perez, El regimenespaiol en Venezuela (Madrid, 1932), 130-132; Mario Bricefio-Iragorry, Tapices de historia patria (Caracas, I942), 167-168; Arturo Uslar Pietri, Del hacery deshacerde Venezuela (Caracas, 1962), 45.

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racesprovided thatthe teacher racial withinthe segregation preserved

school.13 adult population, as in Cuba. This is plausiblebecausethe late colonial

In sum,literate madeup aboutone-ninthof the adultsprobably

economicexpansion, and periodmarkedthe peak of the Venezuelan are also The the Cuban burst of economic data predated major growth. in accord of educational asa decline with the hypothesis for Venezuela resultof thesevere for Cuba warsof independence, andof an increase due to the absenceof war. The available "hard"data indicatethat for 1846.Indeed,by the beginningof the twentiethcentury,Cuba's adult literacyrate was twice that of Venezuela.Therefore,Cuba its adultliteracy ratewhile Venezuela doubledit duringa quadrupled
centuryin which the yearsand intensityof internalwarswere probably
Cuba's 1836 school participation ratio was twice as large as Venezuela's

in Venezuela thanin Cuba. greater Mexico

In Mexico, the "hardest" data available come from the

from the school-age children were then enrolled. Extrapolating of we also the population 1844(which know),I4 schoolparticipation ratiofor thatyearwas4.8 percent. Thus,schoolenrollment may have tripled duringthisperiod.Giventhefactthatthe warwith the United States intervenedbetween these two dates, the sharp increaseis Yet it may be that the school enrollmentratio for questionable. Mexico in 1844 was below the I836 Cuban level, but above the
Venezuelanlevel for 1846.

1857 school census. They show that 11.7 percent of the school-age

Reasonablyuseful and reliableliteracy or school enrollment are lacking. for the period of the wars of independence estimates the of level school However,given mid-nineteenth-century enrollment and even aftera fairly severewar of independence which persisted
intermittentinternalwar thereafter,and the fact that the Viceroyalty period, one may hypothesize that Mexico's literacy rate for I8Io was

of New Spainwas thejewel of the Spanish empirein the latecolonial

of the age. The adultliteracyratemight have high by the standards beenmorethanthe one-ninth levelwhichhasbeenestimated for Cuba
13 Quotation from Tulio Chiossone, Los problemas sociales en la formacion del estado venezolano (Caracas, 1964), 9-IO; Ildefonso Leal, "La universidad de Caracas y la sociedad colonial Venezolana," Revista de historia, III (I962), 33. 14 Memoria de justicia e instrucio6nptiblica, 1844 (Mexico, I844); Luis Gonzalez y Gonzalez, Emma Cosfo Villegas, and Guadalupe Monroy, "La vida social," in Daniel Cosio Villegas (ed.), Historia modernade Mdxico: La repiblica restaurada (Mexico, i956).

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| JORGE I. DOMINGUEZ

and Venezuela, but probably not beyond one-sixth of the adult population. The main supportfor this hypothesiscomes from qualitative data. The Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico was founded in
1553. Mexico's university preceded by some 170 years the establishment of universities in Cuba and Venezuela in the I720s, and it preceded

Chile's by two full centuries.Intellectuallife and the professionshad a long, mature life in Mexico before the other three colonies under considerationbegan their own indigenous efforts. Since the last third of the sixteenth century, there had been a proliferationof secondary schools(some of which alsoincludedprimaryschools).The Augustinian
fathers founded two between 1540 and I575. The Jesuits established

two in Mexico City, and others in the cities and towns of Patzcuaro, Oaxaca, Puebla, Veracruz, Tepoztlan, Guanajuato,and Guadalajara,
all between 1575 and 1585. Moreover, by 1559 the Dominicans and the

Augustinianshad forty convents each, with primary schools attached to them.15 in the sixteenthcentury The burstof educationalentrepreneurship slowed down considerablyduring the following century, but a good many schools survived. When the Jesuits were expelled in 1767, they left thirty-nine schools which were then taken over by the state. A secondaryschool for women was establishedin 1767, an Academy
of the Arts was established in 1781, and a School of Mining in I783.

The last soon became the leading technicalcenter of the Viceroyalty, and promoted the growth of experimentalscience.The King provided twenty-five scholarshipsfor needy students at the School of Mining and the Academy of Arts. In the I790s, a new university was established in the city of Guadalajara.I6 In Mexico, too, education was mostly limited to whites. Yet, in contrastto the other countries,there was a seriousinitial effort beyond missionarywork to educate the Indians.The first primary school in
America was established by Franciscan Friars in Texcoco in 1523; two

years later it moved to Mexico City. It was exclusively designed to teach Indians. Other primary schools followed during the I520senough so that the King authorizedthe establishmentof a secondary
school (Colegio de San Juan de Letran) for poor mestizos in I529. In
I5 Francisco Larroyo, Historia comparadade la educacionen Mexico (Mexico, I947), 88-89, III-125; Jose Bravo Ugarte, La educacionen Mexico (Mexico, 1966), 55-59. 16 Jose L. Becerra L6pez, La organizacion de los estudios en la Nueva Espana (Mexico, 1936) 327-334; Larroyo, Educacion, 136-141; Bravo Ugarte, Educacion,77-78.

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1536, another secondary school (Colegio Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco) was established to educate the children of Indian chieftains. In the I53os, a system of rural schools (Hospitales de Santa Fe) was organized, which would move into a community as a work-study center. Each attempted to identify the process of education with other normal life processes. Each was a communal institution, thus closer to Indian traditions than the more European-oriented school.17 This early effort at educating Indians came under attack in the sixteenth century from two sources. One, it would have opened the lower professions to the Indians. In order to prevent this, the guild system was transplanted to New Spain, with provisions for the exclusion of the Indians: The blacksmiths established their guild in 1524, the silk artisans in 1524, the knitting and textile artisans in 1546, etc. The rise of the early white, artisan, urban middle class in Mexico was accomplished at the expense of the Indians. It was both an ethnic and an economic conflict.I8 The second source of attack upon Indian education came from the fear that it would destabilize what was still a precarious social system in the first century of the conquest. In 1539, Carlos Chichimecatecotl, chieftain of Texcoco and an alumnus of the Tlatelolco school, revolted against Spain. This fear of political instability as a result of educating the Indians was joined by the fear of religious unorthodoxy. In 1541, the Counselor to the Viceroy of Mexico, Jeronimo L6pez, wrote to the King about the effectiveness of the Tlatelolco school. He testified about the "error and the injuries which may follow from the learning of the sciences by the Indians, and an even greater danger from placing the Bible in their hands and the entire Sacred Scripture that they may read and confuse." The Counselor quoted a cleric who visited the school and who was surrounded by about 200 students "who asked him questions from Sacred Scripture about the Faith which astonished him, and he covered his ears and said that this was Hell and that they were disciples of the Devil." The Counselor concluded: "This appears to me to have gone beyond any remedy other than ending what has been done thus far and avoiding such steps in the future." By the end of the century, indeed, the Counselor had his way. Tlatelolco became a primary school, and education of the
17
I8

Larroyo, Educacion,76-88. Paula Alegria, La educacionen Mexico antes y despue's de la conquista(Mexico, 1936), IOO-I02; Diego L6pez Rosado, Historia econ6micade Mexico (Mexico, 1963), IoI.

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| JORGE I. DOMINGUEZ

Indians beyond Christianizationseems to have decayed during the

second century of the conquest.I9 In sum, education was mostly limited to the whites and some mestizos; in addition, some efforts at literacy in Spanish for Indians were made for the sake of Christianization. The Indian population, on the whole, was not socially mobilized. But the evidence of significant educational advancement for the whites of Mexico, from the first days of the conquest through the late colonial period, is impressive. The Viceroyalty anticipated by a full century and a half the three other colonies in having a complex, nation-wide, educational system. It is, therefore, reasonable that its level of literacy in the late colonial period may have been somewhat higher than that of the other colonies. Thus, on the assumption that independence produced an educational cost for both Mexico and Venezuela, in the absence of a comparable cost for Cuba, it is a plausible hypothesis that the Mexican level of literacy at the time of the wars of independence was higher than that for either Venezuela or Cuba. By mid-nineteenth century, Cuba surpassed Mexico, while the latter declined; Venezuela declined and fell behind the other two. This ranking for the mid-century is well supported by the quantitative estimates for school participation. In Chile I3.5 percent of the population was found to be Chile literate in the 1854 national census. Approximately one-fifth of the population aged I5 or more was literate at the time. Chile's level of literacy at mid-century was thus at least twice that of Venezuela. It is more difficult to establish Chile's level of literacy in the late colonial period. Chile had a war of independence, but it was less severe than in Venezuela or Mexico. After 1830 it had an uninterrupted tradition of stable government which was marred only by minor disturbances. Despite losses during its war of independence, Chile was able to experience a resurgence of wealth during the mid-nineteenth century, unlike the other independent countries. From 1840 to I855 silver production increased sixfold. By the I86os, Chile supplied 40 percent of the world's copper. From 1844 to 1860, the value of Chilean exports increased 400 percent; the value of agricultural production increased fivefold.20
19 Alegria, Educacion,I45; Larroyo, Educacion,96. 20 Corporaci6n de Fomento de la Producci6n, Geografia economica de Chile, texto refundido(Santiago, I965), 438.

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to hypothesize In short, given economic expansion,it is reasonable considerableeducational expansion. This growth in mid-nineteenth century implies that the level of literacy for the late colonial period may have been much lower. Chile, too, was probably at the level of literacyof Venezuelaand Cuba. Unlike Mexico and Venezuela,which experienceddeclinesas a resultof the wars of independence,both Cuba and Chile were able to experiencepositive ratesof social mobilization. From Chile's partialcensus in 1813 of the Bishopric of Santiago (comprising approximately half of the country) minus the city of Santiago, the population between ages 7 and 15 is estimated at 22.5 percent of the total. This will be generalizedto Santiagoitself. There were some 500 studentsenrolled in all primary schools in the city of
Santiago in 1810, and 664 in I813. The population of the city has been estimated between 30,000 and 35,000 in I8Io. After war-induced urbanization occurred, the city had about 50,000 inhabitants in 1813.

Therefore, between 6.3 percent and 7.4 percent of Santiago'sschoolage populationin 18Io, and 5.9 percentin 1813 was enrolledin school. Although the national statisticsfor the whole country were probably much lower, Chile was probably at the level of Cuba and Venezuela, but behind Mexico.2' Qualitativedatasupportthis rankingfor Chile in 1810.Missionary educationalactivity began in the i55os; there was a primaryschool by was founded in 1678; its 1567. The Colegio de San Diego (Franciscan) enrollmentin the seventeenthcenturywas between sixteenand twenty; it did not fall below thirty studentsin the eighteenth century and by 1805 there were forty-two. In 1767, the Jesuits had thirty primary when they were expelled schoolsin Chile-which they had to surrender was forty from the empire. In San Felipe,the mean studentattendance it was more thanforty since 1725. By the end of the eighteenthcentury, in Chile boastedsomeeducationalactivities.Moreover, by most parishes the Cabildo 1803, (municipal council) of Santiago supported nine public schools with a combined mean attendance of about 400 students.There were forty-five convents in Chile, and they, too, had educational activities. Until 1767, the ten secondary schools of the Jesuits were the bulwark of the educationalsystem at that level. The Colegio San Franciscohad fifty studentsin I767.
21 Computed from Diego Barros Arana, Historia general de Chile (Santiago, 1933), VII, 528; Archivo Nacional, Censo de 1813 (Santiago, I953), passim; Fernando Campos Harriet, Desarrollo educacional,181o-1960 (Santiago, I960), I2.

after I743; in Copiap6, it was forty after I745; and in Valparaiso

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| JORGE I. DOMINGUEZ

There were four institutionsfor secondaryprofessionaland higher education. In 1778, the Colegio Carolino was founded as a center for secularsecondary and higher education. It had an annual average of the AcademiaSanLuisas a In 1797, the Cabildo of Santiagoestablished center of professionaleducation, including mathematics,rudimentary appliedscience,chemistry,and mineralogy. It had ninety-four students
in 1813. Between 1763 and 1794, the Seminary had 935 students, or an twenty-nine students (950 in toto by 181I). It had forty students in I8Io.

annualaverage of twenty-nine. The fourthwas the Universityof SanFelipe,which beganfunctionin ing limited form in Santiago in 1747, by merely awarding degrees earned elsewhere until its buildings and faculty were ready in I756.
From 1756 to 1764, it had some 400 students enrolled, or an annual average of fifty-five to sixty. From 1756 to I830, it had 1,837 students, or an annual average of about twenty-five. The difference is probably accounted for by the impact of the wars of independence. Although Chile was the last of the four countries under consideration to receive its university, the rest of its educational system seemed sufficiently solid to warrant placement alongside Cuba and Venezuela in 18IO. Chilean education belonged to whites. Its failure to educate the Indians was perhaps more severe than in the other countries. The Spanish government had never been able to subdue the Chilean Indians militarily. It sought to accomplish the same through Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries; this also failed. The main effort toward Indian education was a secondary and primary school for children of Indian chieftains established in the town of Chillan in I700, intended for twelve to twenty students with sixteen scholarships. It had twenty-four students in 1778, eighteen in I785, ten in 1786, and eleven in 1790. The teaching of Indian languages was prescribed between 1700 and 1723, but prohibited in the re-established, post-I774 school. Indeed, it was illegal for students even to speak in Indian languages. The school was closed in 1723, to be reopened only in 1774. The number of blacks and mulattoes in Chile was very small, but they, too, were operating under the same severe educational handicap as elsewhere.22
22 Sergio Villalobos, Tradicion y reformaen 1810 (Santiago, 1961), 63-73; Francisco
Historia de Chile (Santiago, (Santiago, 1946), V, 517-527, 194-198, 552-576, 236-242, 582-587, 591; Barros

Encina,

Arana, Chile, 538-539; Alejandro Fuenzalida, Historia del desarrollointelectual de Chile

1541-1810 1903), 3-4, 60-78, 205-221, 267. Computations

on average annual enrollment are based on these sources, correcting their arithmetic errors.

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PER CAPITA INCOME

Estimates of per capita income

for Spanish

America in I8IO are subject to a plethora of qualifications about validity and reliability. These estimates, once again, should be considered no more than orders of magnitude for comparison. The evidence does suggest that this indicator is within the general range that may be expected on the basis of other indicators of social mobilization. The social mobilization literature argues that there is a high positive correlation between per capita income and literacy and educational levels. Therefore, the level of per capita income is another piece in the puzzle to help estimate the literacy-education levels.23 We have only two estimates of per capita income for the period under consideration. The gross national product per capita of Cuba in 1825, measured in 1950 United States dollars, was $I70-truly an extraordinary statistic for the age.24 There was considerable economic growth in Cuba up to the late I820S. That growth, however, was heavily based on an illiterate, slave labor force. Thus, the level of literacy probably lagged well behind what we may otherwise have expected from such a level of per capita income. The Mexican gross domestic product per capita of I803 has been calculated at approximately between 600 and I,ooo pesos, measured in I950 prices. In I900, calculations show a per capita product of 628 pesos. The per capita product in 1950 United States dollars for 1803 Mexico, however, might have been as low as $45-55.25 We can use the per capita income data to bolster the Mexican estimates of literacy. During the nineteenth century, Mexico was ravaged by internal and international war. Mid-nineteenth-century Mexico, in contrast with Venezuela, had been unable to reach its I8Io
This position is at the heart of the social mobilization hypothesis. Aggregate data for 117 countries in the mid-twentieth century show that the product moment correlation between gross national product per capita in 1957 United States dollars and the percent of the population aged 15 or more which was literate is .80; approximately two thirds of the variance in adult literacy can be explained by per capita income. Ithiel Pool, Robert Abelson, and Samuel Popkin, Candidates, Issues and Strategies: A ComputerSimulation of the 196o and 1964 PresidentialElections (Cambridge, Mass., 1965) omit education as a type defining variable from their simulations because it was correlated highly enough with socioeconomic status and would thus have added little predictive power. In our case, the literacy-education variable is easier to obtain than the income variable. We have thus taken the opposite approach. 24 William P. McGreevey, "Recent Research on the Economic History of Latin America," Latin AmericanResearchReview, III (1968), 98. and Growth 25 Clark W. Reynolds, The Mexican Economy: Twentieth Century Structure (New Haven, 1970), 15-19, 311-314; McGreevey, "Economic History," 97-I00.
23

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i JORGE I. DOMINGUEZ

economic level.26The longitudinal data on per capita income suggest that Mexico eitherstagnatedor grew at a very slow rate-a compound annualratewell under I percentper year-during the whole nineteenth century. Moreover, the estimatedliteracy level for I8Io is within the same range as adult literacyfor Mexico in I900. Therefore,it may be a reasonablehypothesis that the I900 literacy level is a probable upper
limit for the 18Io level of literacy.

The longitudinal data also support the hypothesis of an incomeliteracy-educationdecline from I8Io to themid-nineteenth century. This was the cost of the wars of indepel dence. Mexico attained its
I900 education-literacy level-the

I8Io level-only

after a significant

educationalpush during the second half of the nineteenthcentury. The percentageof school age children enrolled in school in I900 was three times greaterthan in the middle of the nineteenthcentury.27
URBANIZATION

Cuba had one large city-Havana-which

in

I792 comprised approximately 50,000 people, or 18.4 percent of the

national population. According to Humboldt, Havana accounted for

I6 percent of the population in 1811. According to the 1827 census, greater Havana's II2,000 citizens accounted for I4.5 percent of the

population.28It was, then, a large city by internationalcomparative standards.Specific data for other cities-separate from their districtsare available only for 1827. We thus extrapolate backward to 1817,

assumingthat the rateof growth of the city was the same as that for the districtin which it was located. Given the population by districtsfor
1827 and 1817, and the population of the largest cities in 1827, there were four cities in 1817 with a probable population of Io,ooo or more: Havana, Puerto Principe, Santiago de Cuba, and Sancti Espiritus. According to the 1817 census, Havana contained I5 percent of the population of the country. These four cities had 28 percent of the population. In I8Io, the first three cities probably still had at least Io,ooo persons; thus the percentage of the entire population living in cities of Io,ooo or more was probably 20-25 percent.29
26 Tulio Halperin Donghi, Historia contempordnea de Ame'ricaLatina (Madrid, 1969),
182, 192. 27 Moises Gonzalez Navarro, "La vida social," in Daniel Cosio Villegas (ed.), Historia modernade Mexico: El porfiriato(Mexico, 1957), 599-60I.

28 Computed from Alexander von Humboldt (ed. J. S. Thrasher), The Island of Cuba (New York, I856), I84-I9I, 205; Hugh Thomas, Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom(New York, I97I), I2n, Io6n. 29 Computed from Ram6n de la Sagra, Historia economica,politica y estadisticade la isla de Cuba (La Habana, 1831), 5-6, I3.

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The population of Caracasin I8oo was approximately42,000 (a little more than half the size of Havana), which accounted for only 4.7 percent of the population of Venezuela, or less than one-third of Havana'sshare.Venezuelahad nine cities with Io,ooo or more people in I8Io, together making up I7.1 percent of the entire population. In short, the total relative urbanizationof Venezuela was approximately matched by the proportional share of metropolitan Havana
alone.30 accounted for 2.4 percent of the population Mexico City (137,ooo000) of the Viceroyaltyof New Spainfor I803-04; the seventeencitiesin the

Viceroyaltywith more than Io,ooo people contained8.3 percentof the country'spopulation. Therefore,the level of urbanizationfor Mexico was less than that for either Cuba or Venezuela; yet, the absolute
number of urban residents was 485,000 in Mexico but only I54,000 for

Venezuelain the late colonial period. Mexico had twice the numberof cities of Io,ooo inhabitantsthat Venezuela had, and six times Cuba's number. In Mexico, the variety of urbansocial life was greaterthan in the other colonies. Although most people lived in the ruralareasor in small towns, there were, nevertheless,many cities which served effectively as regionalcapitals.At the top of the urbanhierarchywas Mexico City-an impressivemetropolisfor the age.31
The available data on urbanization for Chile are less direct, but

suggest that Chile was the least urban of the four countries under consideration.In the I790s, the period for which most populationdata are available,Santiagowas the only city of more than Io,ooo persons. By I8Io, it may have had 35,ooo-still I0,000 fewer than Caracas.The available estimates for the I79os, including unsubdued Indians in southern Chile, give Chile a 4 percent level of urbanization,which is equal to that for the city of Santiagoalone. For 1810, it seems doubtful that Chile's level of urbanization (includingSantiagoand Concepcion) was much more than 5 percent,counting the Indianswithin the population. If the Indiansare excluded, the level of urbanizationwould still not reach 6 percent. Therefore,the other three countriessurpassChile on most scales of urbanizationfor the late colonial period. Encina estimatesa permanent"urban"population of 20 percent for the cities
30 3I 329. Computed from Brito Figueroa, Venezuela, 154-155. Computed from Alejandro de Humboldt, Ensayo politico sobreel Reino de la Nueva
I941), 263, 265, 271-272, 274, 286, 288, 290, 295, 299, 309, 317, 323-324,

Espana (Mexico,

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I. DOMINGUEZ

and towns, and Barros Arana, one-third. But they reach these higher statistics only by including as urban all the small towns and villages.32 The most useful, available data on "mass media" exposure relate to the introduction and use of the printing press. It was introduced in Mexico between 1532 and I537. For a considerable period of time, the press was used to issue government proclamations and other documents, and to advance the work of the Church. A monthly gazette appeared briefly in 1722, and was then published in Mexico City between 1728 and 1742; the Gaceta was published fortnightly on a continuous basis from 1784 until I8Io when competition forced it into semiweekly publication. Other short-lived
MEDIA EXPOSURE periodicals appeared in 1768, 1772-1773, 1787, and I788-1794. Daily

newspapers began publication in Mexico City and Veracruz in I805. The rate of publication by titles from all Mexican printing presses was
I88 titles in I809, 232 in I8IO, and 147 in I8II.

When the Mexican wars of independence broke out in I8Io, a newspaper war occurred between revolutionary and counterrevolutionary presses. In fact, enough printing presses were available in Mexico to have a newspaper, pamphlet, and book war. The official press of Mexico City and Veracruz turned against the rebels, but the latter had resources at least in Guadalajara, Sultepec, Oaxaca, and Jaujilla between I8io and 1817. The press in Oaxaca dated from 1720, that in Guadalajara from 1793, and the one in Veracruz from 1794. Most of the revolutionary newspapers were weeklies. In sum, there was no shortage of printing presses and newspapers for political mobilization.33 It appears that no printing press existed in Venezuela prior to I808, two years before the outbreak of independence. There is evidence that some religious prints and calendars may have been printed in Venezuela before I808, and perhaps some government proclamations, but this is still disputed among reputable Venezuelan historians. They agree, however, that the I808 press was the first whose existence can
32 Computed from Encina, Chile, V, I60-161, 168-169, I75, I98-I99, 207-221; Barros Arana, Chile, 488-489. For I8Io, the estimate of the total population is 900,00o; the estimate of the population in cities of at least Io,ooo persons is 45,000 (by taking

the maximum reportsof the sizes of Santiagoand Concepci6n). de Mexicoy la prensa 88-89; J. M. Miquel, La independencia 33 Larroyo,Educacion,
(Mexico, 194I), 17-19, passim; Lucas Alaman, Historia de M6jico(Mejico, I968), insurgente

I, 84-85; Hugh M. Hamill, Jr., "EarlyPsychologicalWarfarein the Hildago Revolt,"

Hispanic AmericanHistorical Review, XLI (I96I), 2I5; C. H. Haring, The Spanish Empire in America (New York, I953), 228-231.

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be validated, the first which enjoyedcontinuous existencefor some the firstto havea significant socialeffect. time,and,mostimportantly, Withina monthof itsarrival, thefirstnewspaper, La Gaceta, cameout. Thepress wasalsoimportant thewarsof independence, during although less so than in Mexico. The absenceof a printingpresswith social effectuntil I808 suggests thatthe demand for writtenmaterials or the to use them was low be to satisfied capacity enough throughthe localVenezuelan issues werenot publicly importof books.Moreover, andregularly in print.34 discussed Chilewasnot muchbetteroff thanVenezuela. brought TheJesuits
a printing press in 1748; after their expulsion in 1767, the press was active between 1776 and 18Io, publishing pamphlets, proclamations, notices, prayers, and similar materials. There is no evidence that a pamphlet longer than sixteen pages was published. Chile's first newspaper, Aurora de Chile, did not appear until February, 1812, after the revolutionary government imported another printing press. It was a weekly newspaper with a circulation of 200 units. In short, though one can validate the existence of a functioning printing press in eighteenth-century Chile, its social effect was limited. Chile's level of media exposure was higher-but not by much-than Venezuela's.35 In the middle of our ordinal scale, closer to Mexico, we place Cuba.36 The printing press came to Havana in 1723 and to Santiago in 1792. The first newspaper, La Gazeta, was published in 1764. But the first serious social effect came with the Papel Periodicode la Habana, in October, I790. It appeared first as a weekly, then as a semiweekly. Thus Cuba was clearly a match for Mexico City in terms of newspapers, if not ahead. In contrast to Mexico, however, there is no evidence for newspapers extending to other parts of the country until briefly in I8IO to Santiago, and more generally after I820. Newspapers blossomed in Havana after 1820, and a daily appeared in I8Io. There is little doubt that the Papel Periodico had a very significant social effect on political, social, economic, literary, and artistic ideas, for most of the
34 Pedro Grases (ed.), Or'genes de la inprenta en Venezuela y primicias editoriales en Caracas(Caracas, I958); Julio Febres Cordero, Tres siglos de imprentay culturavenezolana, 1500-1800 (Caracas, 1969). See also Alejandro de Humboldt, Viajes a las regiones del nuevo continente(Caracas, 1941), 334. equinocciales 35 Encina, Chile, V, 383-385; Jose T. Medina (ed. Guillermo Feliu Cruz), Bibliografia de la imprentaen Santiago de Chile desdesus or'geneshasta Febrerode 1817 (Santiago, 1960), xiii-xiv, xxxiv-xxxv, in Feliu's introduction; xiv-xviii, xxvii, in Medina's introduction. II, 305; idem, "Desarrollo 36 Juan J. Remos, "La cultura," Historia de la nacion ctubana, literario," ibid., III, 353-360.

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leading membersof Cuban society came to be associatedwith it at one point or another. There are two reasonswhy Cuba is ranked behind Mexico on media exposurein I8Io: I) there is evidence that newspapersextended their domain beyond the capitalin Mexico before they did so in Cuba; in two Mexican cities five years before 2) the shift to daily newspapers Cuba suggeststhat the demand for written materialswas higher in the Viceroyalty. In short, Mexico may have startedat a level comparable to Cuba, but it took the lead in the very late colonial period. This essay has developed a comparative perspective on the level of socialmobilizationin the first quarterof the nineteenthcenturyin these four colonies. The purpose has not been to establishprecise interval measurements for the period. Instead,there is a rough ordinalscale for social mobilization, and upper and lower limits to a possible interval scale. Therefore,one can say with some confidencethat the rateof adults (personsover age 5) who were literatedid not go beyond 20 percentin any of these countriesin I8Io, and that it was probablycloser to Io-I2 percent. The upper limit, perhaps approachedby Mexico, was 14I7 percent. Fairlydirect data on the percentageof school-age children actuallyenrolledwere obtainedfor Chile and Cuba for 18Io and 1817, respectively; the level was about 4 percent. Cuba (which experienced no war), and Chile (which experiencedone less severe than the other Mexico (then ranking third) and Venezuela(at the two) had surpassed the of the nineteenth century in terms of school middle bottom) by enrollment relative to the school-age population. This is especially striking because the qualitative and quantitativedata for the period before the outbreakof the warsplaceMexico at the top, followed about equally by the other three. Urbanization,measuredas the percentageof the populationliving in cities with Io,ooo or more inhabitants, is highest in Cuba and Venezuela for the late colonial period. Their respective upper and lower
limits of estimate are 20-25

third, and Chile, fourth. The limits for these two are 5-Io percent. Nevertheless,Mexico had developed an urbancenter in its capitalcity unmatchedfor variety of urbanlife. It was a distinctive metropolitan center. Moreover, the number of cities in Mexico was about twice that in Venezuela, while Cuban and Chilean urbanizationwas concentratedin their respectivecapitalcities.If the numberof cities(rather

percent and 14-18 percent. Mexico ranks

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than the number of people in them) is counted, the ranks are Mexico (I7), Venezuela (9), Cuba (3), and Chile (2). And if the distinctive qualities of life in metropolitan centers are stressed,37then the ranks are Mexico (Mexico City), Cuba (Havana), Venezuela (Caracas), and Chile (Santiago). The data on media exposure generally confirm these findings. Mexico was at the top, followed closely by Cuba, and then by Chile and Venezuela. The data on per capita income are available for Cuba and Mexico only, but for two very different periods: for Mexico at the end of the colonial period, and for Cuba in the late I820s. The later Cuban date, reflecting its significant economic growth, placed Cuba ahead of Mexico. Table I summarizes the ordinal scales. The urbanization scale is broken down into three components: the percentage of the population in cities over Io,ooo; the number of cities of such size; and a ranking of capital cities only. The date of the foundation of universities is taken to develop a scale indicating the length of time during which elite professionals were produced by the native educational systems. Table 2 summarizes the rank scores received by each country on the six variables in Table I. The four countries appear in a composite rank, which is treated as a seventh variable in Tables 3 and 4. Table 3 presents a matrix of Kendall's tau-a rank order correlations based on the Table1 Social Mobilization in I8Io: Country Rankings on Six Variables I. Literacy-edutcationl Mexico
Cuba a
2.

Universities Mexico
Cuba a

3. Mediaexposure Mexico
Cuba

Chilea Venezuelaa 4. Urbanizationlpopulatiotn

Venezuelaa Chile Urbalnizatioll5.

numiiber of cities

Chile Venezuela 6. Metropolitani

centers

Cuba Venezuela Mexico Chile

a

Mexico Venezuela Cuba Chile

Mexico Cuba Venezuela Chile

Tied.

37 George A. Kubler, "Cities and Culture in the Colonial Period in Latin America," Diogenes, XLVII (I964), 59-60.

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Table2

Composite Rank Scores for Social Mobilization in I8IO

NUMBER OF SCORES

COUNTRIES

RANK I

RANK 2

RANK 3

RANK 4

Mexico Cuba

5 I

o 4

I
I I

Venezuela
Chile

o
o

4
I

0 0 I 4

Total

Table3 Kendall's Tau-a Rank Order Correlations

I I 2 3 4 5 6 7 .5 .50 -.I7 .50 .50 .50

2
.I .50 7 .83 .83 .83

.00 .33 .67 .67 .00oo .33 .33 67 .67 I.00 -

Table4 Kendall's Tau-bRank Order Correlations

I
I

2 3 4 5 6 7

.77 .7I -.24 .7I .71 .7I

.55 .i8 .91 .9I .9I

.00 .33 .67 .67 .00 .33 .33 .67 .67 I.o -

six variables of Table I plus the seventh variable from Table 2. Because variables i and 2 of Table I show tied ranks, Table 4 presents a matrix of Kendall's tau-b rank order correlations based on the same seven variables. Kendall's tau-b, unlike tau-a, has a mathematical adjustment in the denominator of tau in order to correct for ties. The effect of the

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ascanbe readily seenby comparing the valuesin Tables 2 adjustment, and3, is to increase the numerical valueof tau.38
For purposesof analysis,let us first exclude variable4 (percentage
of the population living in cities with more than Io,ooo persons), and variable 7 (the composite rank of Table 2). Nine of the remaining ten correlations show tau-a values between 0.50 and 0.83; the tenth is tau-a53=0.33. The same nine show tau-b values between 0.55 and = 0.33. No one single rank order o.9I; the tenth is, once again, tau-b53 correlation is terribly impressive when there are only four observations; rather, one is more taken with the general direction and size of all of them. This would be expected from the social mobilization hypothesis. The six variables of Table I also correlate well with the composite rank (variable 7) of Table 2. The lowest tau value (a or b) is, as expected, tau47= 0.33. All other tau-b values are between 0.67 and I.oo. Four of the six tau-a values are also in that range. On the other hand, variable 4 is clearly not measuring the same things as the others. Excluding the composite rank, its five tau-a values
0.33 to tau-a41 = - 0.17; its tau-b values range from range from tau-a46 On either value of tau, it shows two tau-b46= 0.33 to tau-b4l= -0.24.

positive correlations, two at o.oo, and one negative correlation. One may question its utility as an indicator of social mobilization for this period. This skepticism about the general urbanization variable is supported by the theoretical discussion earlier in this essay. There are, however, special reasons why the variable must be looked at with considerable caution in the study of these countries at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The hypothesis is that Spanish American cities at that time were significantly different from those that had or would emerge in Western Europe and North America, and later in Latin America. Richard Morse has argued that the Latin American city was the point of departure for the settlement of the soil. The European city represented a movement of economic energies away from extractive pursuits toward those of processing and distribution. The colonial Latin American city was the source of energy and organization for the exploitation of natural resources. Therefore, the location of the city was determined by political and strategic considerations arising
38 The formulae for Kendall's tau-a and tart-b, and an explanation of the difference between them can be found in the discussion of rank order correlations in most basic textbooks on statistics. See, for instance, Hubert M. Blalock, Social Statistics(New York,
1960), 3I7-324.

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from the needs of settlement.And the economic activitiesof the urban dwellers drew them to the countryside-to agricultureand mining. In short, a political and"ruralized" city emerges. Through most of the colonial period, Morse argues that cities were in a centrifugalphase.The towns distributedstatus-and fortuneseekersout to the land. The social organizationof the town was oftel unstable,and its very life sometimes ephemeral.The centripetalphase took hold only well into the nineteenth century. Yet in the late colonial period, it is possible that some leading cities-typically the capitalcities-had begun to enter the centripetal phase.In the countries chief understudy, Mexico City and Havanawere the examplesof cities which had begun to draw from the surroundingareas, followed by Caracasand Santiago.39 In sum, it is likely that even cities with Io,ooo inhabitants-other with than the capitalcities-did not exhibit the qualityof life associated social mobilization. Neither their elites nor their masseswere fundamentally engaged in "new" kinds of behavior. Their orientation was

rural and non-industrial,even if they lived in a city or town. The correlations which marksocialmobilization,therefore, among variables are stronger with literacy, university experience, media exposure, number of cities, and metropolitan urban centers than with the cities. percentageof the populationin "ruralized"
CONCLUSIONS

Deutsch has suggested that the threshold of signific-

ance for social mobilization is that level below which no significant departurefrom the customary workings of a traditionalsociety can be detected and no significant disturbanceappears to be created in its unchangedfunctioning. He set that thresholdat 60 percent of adult literacy.40That may be too high. Nevertheless,it is difficultto argue that the levels of socialmobilizationin thesefour countries,as measured by adult literacy, could have accounted for the "significantdisturbance" and the "significantdeparture " of the wars of independencein three of the four colonlies. Moreover,if the socialmobilizationhypothesis were to apply, there would have been a revolt in Cuba-second in composite rank-probably at about the same time, and there might not have been a revolt in Chile, which rankedlast. At theselow levels,
39 Richard M. Morse, "Latin American Cities: Aspects of Function and Structure," "Some Studies iz Society and History, IV (I962), 474, 479-480, 493; ideum, Comtparative Characteristics of Latin American Urban History," Amlericanl Historical Review, LXVII (1962), 322; Kubler, "Cities." 40 Deutsch, "Social Mobilization," 497.

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therefore, the political implications of the rate of change of social

mobilization are still very marginal.

One has to go far back into the history of the currentlyindustrialized countriesto find such low levels of socialmobilization.In 1660, up to 30 percent of all adult males in England were literate; by 1770,
50 percent of young rural males in England were literate. The estimates of male literacy ill early post-TokugawaJapan are 40-50 percent; at the end of the Tokugawa period (i86os), 43 percent of the young men and io percent of the young women were receiving some kind of schooling. In the United States, the census of I840 reported only 9 percent of the white population over age 20 as illiterate.41 There are, in short, four theoretical conclusions. First, the country rankings on social mobilization suggest considerable difficulty in linking the independent and dependent variables. If social mobilization were a significant cause of political participation during the wars of independence, one would have expected a revolt in Cuba and no revolt in Chile. Such was not the case; causes and consequences are not matched. Second, the social mobilization hypothesis is not a general, adequate explanation of political participation during the wars of independence period. The levels of social mobilization in the four colonies were far below the thresholds of significance which must be approached if the hypothesis is to be relevant. Given these low levels, it is difficult to argue that they made a primary contribution to the mass characteristics of the wars. However, it 1ay be possible that all or most of the political participation during the period of the wars of independence came from the areas which had exhibited the most social mobilization. Yet another alternative is that modest amounts of social mobilization, in the context of a relatively traditional society, may have had considerable impact. The meaningof limited social mobilization may have been very striking: A little social mobilization could go a long way. It is possible that a regionally disaggregated study could show a different conclusion, and this should be the subject of further research. However, available research suggests large-scale collective participation during the wars of independence period in areas which were bothhigh and low in social mobilization.42 The issue of the
4I Marius B. Jansen and Lawrence Stone, "Education and Modernization in Japan and England," ComparativeStudies in Society and History, IX (1967), 209, 216, 228; Seymour Martin Lipset, The First New Nation: The United States in Historical and Comparative Perspective(Garden City, N.Y., I967), I08-I09. 42 Dominguez, "Social Mobilization."

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meaning of limited social mobilization is extraordinarily difficult to test operationally in the absence of retrospective surveys. However, as social mobilization is narrowly restricted, the socially mobilized become synonymous with the elite. Clearly, the meaning of elite participation is striking. But the social mobilization hypothesis is about the mass, not the elite. One may suspect, therefore, that at such low levels of social mobilization it is very difficult to disentangle elite participation from "meaningful" but highly restricted mass participation. Third, much of the foregoing makes it clear that there were enough educational institutions at the middle and upper levels to train the elite. Many of the leaders of the revolts were well-educated men. The concepts of the social mobilization hypothesis thus have restricted utility within the study of the elites. But the general utility of the hypothesis is that it stresses mass change beyond the elite. It requires large numbers of socially mobilized persons who are turning to new patterns of organization ind behavior. This was missing in I8Io. Fourth, the low levels of social mobilization suggest that the wars could not have been engendered by men and women who were psychologically autonomous and capable of self-generated political action. Political mobilization depended on leaders and organizations acting upon a fairly inert, non-civic mass. Social mobilization stresses endogenous sources of political behavior. Political mobilization, in the relative absence of social mobilization, stresses exogenous forces working to produce political behavior. Once the exogenous pressures cease, the political behavior ceases. The insight of the social mobilization hypothesis, therefore, has a negative utility for the study of Spanish America after the wars of independence. The hypothesis would then predict a political demobilization or departicipation after the wars of independence ended; only smaller, fragmented groups-the remnants of leaders and organizations-would remain once the grand challenge was met and overcome. This is, then, a contribution to an explanation of the post-I825 period. The wars of independence were not followed by sustained civic participation. The very fact that social mobilization is inapplicable to the onset of the wars makes it applicable to the failure of the wars to launch a fundamentally different, modern type of political system. But to explain the burst of political participation in the first quarter of the nineteenth century and to explain the breakdown of the Spanish empire, one must look to other hypotheses and independent variables.